Revisiting They Walk Amongst Us and Standing in the Light through the Six Stages Framework.
By Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah | 20 September 2026
In August 2024, I wrote an article entitled They Walk Amongst Us: We Have To Stand In The Light .
Britain was witnessing scenes of violence and destruction following the devastating murders of three young girls, Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar, in Southport. Mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers and other community premises were among the places targeted during the subsequent disorder.
I was deeply troubled by what I was witnessing, but my concern extended beyond the immediate violence.
I was asking how we had reached this point. What had happened before people took to the streets? What beliefs, attitudes, narratives and behaviours had preceded the events we were witnessing? What had been tolerated, normalised or left unchallenged?
Using the Six Stages Framework (SSF), I explored movement towards the negative axis and the conditions in which racism and extremism might develop.
I argued that extremism does not emerge from nowhere.
I drew connections between everyday racist banter, misinformation, hostile narratives and the behaviours that become visible when hostility escalates.
I also asked people to stand in the light.
At the time, that meant speaking up, challenging false narratives, supporting those being targeted and refusing to allow racism to go unchallenged.
More than two years later, I have returned to that article.
And I find myself asking some rather different questions.
What did the SSF help us recognise in 2024? What has happened since? What have we learnt about the conditions that allow hostility to develop? And, perhaps most importantly, what have we actually changed?
Why am I returning to this article now?
I could have revisited the article in August 2025, a year after the riots.
Why am I returning to it in September 2026?
Partly because the issues it raised continue to warrant examination. But there is another reason.
My thinking about the Six Stages Framework has continued to develop.
I have been exploring the relationship between stages and states, the environments that shape our responses, and the ways in which people may move towards or away from particular psychological positions.
I have also become increasingly interested in a question that reaches far beyond racism and extremism:
What happened before this happened?
When a crisis becomes visible, we often focus on the event itself. We investigate what happened, identify those involved and consider how to respond.
But what about everything that preceded it?
The repeated signals. The attitudes that were tolerated. The environments in which particular beliefs became reinforced. The opportunities to intervene that may have been missed.
And what happens afterwards?
Do we change the underlying conditions, or do we simply wait for the next crisis?
Returning to my original article allows me to examine these questions with the benefit of subsequent evidence and further development of the SSF.
I am not returning to establish that I was right.
I am returning to examine what my earlier formulation helps us understand, where it requires qualification, and what questions remain unanswered.
A retrospective should not become an exercise in confirming what we already believe.
It should provide an opportunity to question, refine and extend our understanding.
What did the SSF recognise in 2024?
When I reread the article, I was struck by how many of the concerns I have been exploring recently were already present.
I wrote about the relationship between everyday racism and more extreme expressions of hostility.
I questioned the tendency to dismiss racist remarks as banter, particularly when similar attitudes were expressed in workplaces, social settings and football grounds.
I referred to my Bias Impact Tree and the conditions in which the racism virus might thrive.
I also explored what I described as masks of tolerance: the possibility that individuals may present as accepting in one environment while expressing very different attitudes elsewhere.
These were not simply observations about people participating in riots.
They were questions about the relationship between everyday behaviour, social influence and the environments in which hostility develops.
The distinction matters.
A racist joke is not the same as a violent attack. Dismissing someone’s experience of discrimination is not equivalent to organising extremist activity.
But these behaviours should not be examined in isolation from the social contexts in which they occur.
We need to understand whether particular behaviours are challenged, ignored, reinforced or rewarded.
We also need to avoid assuming that everyone participating in a particular event shares identical beliefs or motivations.
The SSF provides a framework for exploring psychological positions and patterns of response. It does not give us licence to infer an individual’s internal psychological state from a single photograph, statement or incident.
That is a distinction I would now make more explicit.
What has happened since 2024?
We have considerably more evidence about the events of August 2024 and their aftermath.
In April 2025, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee published its investigation into the police response to the 2024 summer disorder .
The committee found that restrictions on releasing information following the Southport murders had created an information vacuum in which disinformation flourished. It also identified failures to anticipate the intensity of the violence, limiting opportunities for proactive policing.
The findings provide an important basis for revisiting the relationship between information, institutional responses and escalation.
They do not establish that misinformation alone caused the violence.
Nor do they demonstrate that everyone who encountered misinformation responded in the same way.
That is precisely why psychological formulation matters.
People encounter information through different experiences, relationships, beliefs and social environments. Some question what they encounter. Others accept it, share it or act upon it.
The question is not simply whether misinformation exists, but how people interpret it, what reinforces their interpretations and what makes particular responses possible.
There is also evidence of the consequences of the disorder.
The Home Office’s hate-crime statistics for England and Wales, year ending March 2025 show that police-recorded race hate crimes increased by 6%, excluding the Metropolitan Police Service from the comparison. Religious hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by 19%, with a marked spike in August 2024 following Southport.
These statistics document recorded offences. They cannot tell us precisely where individuals were positioned on the SSF or whether the country as a whole has moved towards one end of the continuum.
The next annual hate-crime release, covering the year ending March 2026, is provisionally scheduled for 8 October 2026.
There have also been institutional responses.
In July 2025, the government responded to the Home Affairs Committee’s recommendations, including those concerning social media, police resilience and strategic coordination.
The committee subsequently sought further detail about plans to strengthen policing’s ability to monitor social media activity associated with crime and disorder.
These developments are documented in the Home Affairs Committee’s July 2025 publication on the government’s response .
They demonstrate that lessons have been identified and responses proposed.
The remaining questions concern implementation, effectiveness and whether changes will be sustained.
Meanwhile, tensions surrounding immigration and asylum remain visible.
On 12 September 2026, Reuters documented an anti-migration demonstration and an opposing anti-racism demonstration in Portsmouth, with police separating the two groups.
Several days later, reports emerged that the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Portsmouth station had temporarily been taken out of service following protests and concerns about the safety of its volunteers. The RNLI confirmed that alternative search-and-rescue arrangements remained in place.
The incident was documented in The Guardian’s report of 17 September 2026 .
This is an example of how hostility can affect the everyday operation of an organisation and those working within it.
We should distinguish legitimate debate about immigration policy and lawful protest from racial harassment, intimidation and violence. They are not interchangeable.
Nevertheless, these continuing events invite us to examine the environments in which public disagreement takes place and the conditions that may allow disagreement to develop into hostility.
Two years on, I do not think the question is simply whether similar events are happening again.
It is whether we understand more about the conditions that preceded the original disorder and whether that understanding has changed our responses.
Revisiting the development of the Six Stages Framework
There is another important aspect of this retrospective.
The SSF itself has continued to evolve.
When I examine my original developmental matrices, including those developed for work with individuals and universities, I am reminded that the framework was always more detailed than the brief stage summaries sometimes suggested.
The original negative axis already distinguished between unawareness, dismissal and avoidance, hostility and rejection, blaming, entrenched racist views, and the active promotion of extremist positions.
These distinctions were set out in the developmental matrices accompanying my earlier work and my 2022 book, Understanding and Dealing with Everyday Racism: The Six Stages Framework.
The matrices examined not only awareness and understanding, but also beliefs, values, behaviour, peer influence, family influence and the role of media.
In other words, social context and environmental influence were already fundamental to the framework.
The SSF was also developed for application across different characteristics and forms of discrimination. Although its origins were rooted in understanding and dealing with racism, its application was never intended to be confined to race alone.
However, in the original formulation, the descriptions of the early positive and negative stages were closely mirrored.
Someone at an early stage might have limited awareness of racism, but the environments they occupied, their relationships, the influence of peers and their responses to new information could shape the direction of subsequent movement.
The importance of context was there, even where the abbreviated descriptions did not make the distinction between the two axes sufficiently explicit.
Since then, I have continued to refine the stage descriptions, making the distinctions between the positive and negative axes more explicit while building on the framework’s original conceptual foundations.
In June 2025, I published a revised account of the Six Stages Framework , refining the stage descriptions and clarifying the developmental distinctions, particularly between the early positive and negative stages.
Six Stages Diversity Framework
The current formulation distinguishes Emerging Awareness at +1 from Unaware and Inactive at −1. It also distinguishes Discomfort and Awakening at +2 from Dismissive and Avoidant at −2.
These distinctions matter.
Someone beginning to recognise an uncomfortable truth may not yet understand it fully. They may feel uncertain, confused or defensive. But that discomfort may also create an opportunity for questioning and learning.
Someone else may encounter similar information and respond by dismissing it, avoiding the conversation or rejecting the experiences of others.
The initial discomfort may appear similar.
The subsequent response and direction of movement may be different.
The revisions have also helped make the descriptions of the negative stages more accessible, without changing the fact that their underlying distinctions were already established in the original matrices.
I see this as an important part of the framework’s continuing development.
The purpose is not to produce increasingly elaborate labels for people.
It is to support more precise understanding of patterns of thinking, behaviour and response, while recognising that context and movement matter.
And this brings me to something I have been exploring more recently.
Stages and states: what state are we occupying?
My recent Weekly Reflection, What State Are You Occupying? And What State Are You Being Drawn Into? , explored the ways in which environments may influence our psychological and emotional states.
We may behave differently at home, at work, within our families or amongst particular groups of friends.
We may become more curious, compassionate and reflective in some environments.
In others, we may find ourselves becoming defensive, fearful, resentful, hostile or increasingly certain that our interpretation is the only possible one.
This raises an important question when I revisit the events of 2024.
What happens when hostility becomes a state that is repeatedly reinforced by the environments we occupy?
Imagine someone who regularly encounters derogatory conversations about a particular group.
At first, they may remain silent.
Over time, they may begin to participate.
Their views may become increasingly resistant to challenge.
Alternatively, they may become uncomfortable with the conversations and begin to question what is being said.
Neither direction is inevitable.
The SSF invites us to examine the conditions influencing movement, rather than assuming that a particular behaviour must lead to an extreme outcome.
This distinction between stages and states also raises questions about social identity and belonging.
What happens when acceptance within a group becomes dependent upon sharing its beliefs?
What happens when questioning those beliefs risks rejection?
And what happens when someone begins to experience hostility not merely as an opinion, but as an expression of loyalty, solidarity or belonging?
These are psychological questions that warrant further investigation.
They also take us back to the importance of peer influence in my original developmental matrices.
The environments we inhabit do not simply provide a backdrop to our behaviour.
They may influence what we notice, what we regard as acceptable, what we feel able to challenge and the versions of ourselves that we express.
When hostility begins to change the environment
One of the questions I find myself asking in 2026 is whether we pay sufficient attention to the effects of hostility on the people who are required to live within it.
When racist behaviour becomes more visible, the consequences extend beyond the individual expressing it.
Consider a child who repeatedly hears adults making hostile comments about people who look like them.
A teacher who witnesses a Black colleague being undermined and remains silent.
An employee who hears racist jokes in a workplace where everyone else appears comfortable.
Or a family that becomes apprehensive about entering particular public spaces following reports of racial hostility.
These examples raise questions about psychological safety and belonging.
What does the environment communicate to those who are targeted?
Who is considered safe? Who is expected to tolerate discomfort? Whose concerns are taken seriously? Who is required to adapt their behaviour in order to avoid becoming a target?
We should not assume that every individual responds to these experiences in the same way.
Some may withdraw. Others may challenge what is happening, seek support or respond in different ways depending upon the circumstances.
The SSF can help us examine these different responses alongside the conditions that shape them.
This is where my more recent work on the Mask of Me becomes relevant.
When people feel unable to express important aspects of themselves because of the environments they occupy, we need to examine not only their individual responses but also the conditions producing that constraint.
The question becomes:
What kinds of environments are we creating for one another, and what are those environments making possible?
What about the positive axis?
My original article did not focus exclusively on those participating in the violence.
I also wrote about communities coming together, rejecting racism and visibly supporting those who were being targeted.
Those responses were an important part of what I described as standing in the light.
On 7 August 2024, thousands of people participated in anti-racism demonstrations across Britain in response to the disorder and anticipated further violence, as documented by Reuters in its report on the demonstrations .
These events invite us to examine the positive axis of the SSF.
What enables people to respond with solidarity when others respond with hostility?
What helps someone speak up when remaining silent might feel easier?
What happens when communities create environments in which people feel supported in challenging prejudice?
I am particularly interested in the relationship between courage and psychological safety.
We sometimes assume that people who intervene must feel confident or unafraid.
But courage does not necessarily require the absence of fear.
Someone may feel frightened, uncertain or vulnerable and still decide to act.
Equally, a person may understand that racism is wrong but remain silent because they fear rejection, conflict or consequences.
The positive axis allows us to examine not only awareness, but also how understanding becomes reflected in behaviour, relationships, advocacy and leadership.
It also challenges us to look beyond individual acts of solidarity.
What happens after the demonstrations have ended?
Are the individuals who spoke up still supported?
Have the institutions in which discrimination occurs changed their practices?
Have communities developed the relationships and structures needed to respond when hostility reappears?
Standing in the light must involve more than a moment of collective visibility.
It raises questions about sustained action.
Have we learnt to recognise the warning signs?
When I wrote the original article, I was concerned that everyday behaviours were being dismissed even though they might contribute to wider patterns of hostility.
That concern remains worth examining.
But I would now frame the question more carefully.
Not every prejudiced remark represents the beginning of a pathway to extremism. Not every individual who expresses anger will become violent. And a single behaviour is insufficient to establish someone’s psychological position.
We need to examine patterns, contexts, changes over time and the influence of the wider environment.
The negative axis provides a way of distinguishing between different forms of response.
Being unaware is not the same as dismissing a concern.
Dismissing a concern is not the same as expressing overt hostility.
Expressing hostility is not identical to developing deeply entrenched views or actively recruiting others to an extremist position.
These distinctions were present in my original developmental work, and they remain essential.
They help us avoid treating every behaviour as equally serious while also encouraging us to recognise behaviours that may warrant earlier intervention.
The question is not whether we should respond to every uncomfortable statement as though it represents an immediate crisis.
It is whether we have the awareness, language and confidence to recognise patterns before they become more deeply entrenched.
This has implications for families, schools, workplaces, community organisations and wider society.
What happens when a child repeatedly expresses hostile stereotypes?
What happens when racist behaviour is continually described as banter?
What happens when organisational leaders acknowledge discriminatory behaviour but fail to change the conditions that allow it to continue?
And what happens when the people affected learn that reporting their experiences makes little difference?
These are not simply questions about individual prejudice.
They are questions about learning, relationships, accountability and the environments we create.
Standing in the light: what does it mean in 2026?
In my original article, I called upon people to speak up, challenge false narratives, foster empathy and support those being victimised.
I still regard those questions as central to my work.
But two years later, I want to explore the idea of standing in the light more deeply.
Standing in the light is not simply about identifying someone else as racist.
It requires us to examine our own beliefs, assumptions, behaviours and responses.
It asks what we do when prejudice is expressed within our families, friendship groups and professional environments.
It asks whether we challenge misinformation when it confirms something we already believe.
It asks whether we can remain curious without becoming passive, and whether we can seek understanding without abandoning accountability.
It also requires us to consider how organisations respond to the conditions in which discrimination develops.
Does a school wait until a serious racist incident occurs before examining its culture?
Does a workplace respond to an individual complaint while leaving the wider environment unchanged?
Does a community mobilise only when violence becomes visible, or does it invest in relationships and understanding long before that point?
These are questions about prevention.
And they bring me back to something that was already present in my earlier work.
The SSF was never simply concerned with describing where people might be positioned.
It was also concerned with movement and the conditions that might support change.
Perhaps standing in the light requires us to become more attentive to those conditions.
Not only asking who is expressing hostility, but also what is reinforcing it.
Not only asking who has been harmed, but also what needs to change to reduce the likelihood of further harm.
Not only asking who intervened during a crisis, but also what might help more people respond constructively before a crisis develops.
What have we actually changed?
I began this retrospective by asking why I had chosen to return to the article now.
Perhaps the answer is that the passage of time has created an opportunity to examine the distance between recognition and change.
In 2024, I was responding to visible hostility.
In 2026, I find myself increasingly interested in what happens before hostility becomes visible, what sustains it once it emerges, and what happens to the people who must live with its consequences.
The original SSF developmental matrices already provided a way of examining psychological positions, behaviour and social influence.
The subsequent revisions have helped me articulate those distinctions more explicitly.
My developing work on states and environments now invites further investigation into how context influences the positions we occupy and the behaviours we express.
These are developments in my thinking, not evidence that every question has been answered.
There is still much to investigate about how people move between psychological positions, how we might assess those changes reliably, and which interventions genuinely support lasting behavioural change.
I also want to acknowledge something that is easy to overlook.
The events of August 2024 did not reveal only hostility.
They also revealed solidarity, courage and people willing to act in support of others.
Both responses deserve our attention.
If we are to understand human behaviour through the SSF, we need to examine the conditions that make movement in either direction possible.
And so I return to the original title.
They Walk Amongst Us: We Have To Stand In The Light.
Two years later, I wonder whether the language of they and us also deserves examination.
It is tempting to locate the problem entirely within those whose behaviour we find unacceptable.
But the SSF asks us to examine something more complex.
We are all participants in social environments.
We influence them through what we say, what we challenge, what we tolerate, what we reinforce and what we choose to ignore.
That does not mean everyone bears equal responsibility for racism or violence. Responsibility must remain connected to people’s actions, influence and opportunities to intervene.
But it does mean that examining the behaviour of others should not prevent us from examining our own contribution to the environments around us.
Perhaps the question is no longer simply where we choose to stand.
It is what our position enables us to see, what we are prepared to do with that understanding, and how our actions influence the environments others are required to inhabit.
In August 2024, I asked people to stand in the light.
In September 2026, I want to ask a further question.
If we recognised the warning signs then, what are we doing differently now?
And if we have not changed the conditions that allow hostility to flourish, what might we need to understand, challenge or do differently before the next crisis becomes visible?
Because recognising a problem is not the same as understanding it.
Understanding it is not the same as changing it.
And standing in the light must ultimately involve examining the distance between what we say we believe and what our behaviour helps to make possible.
Where are you standing today? What state are you occupying? And what kind of environment are you helping to create for others?
Continue the Reflection
This reflection revisits my August 2024 article, They Walk Amongst Us: We Have To Stand In The Light , and builds on my recent reflection, What State Are You Occupying? And What State Are You Being Drawn Into? .
For readers interested in the development of the framework, my June 2025 revised description of the Six Stages Framework provides a further account of the positive and negative axes.
Explore more articles, reflections and resources through the Six Stages Framework website .
Dr Shungu Hilda M’gadzah
Chartered Educational Psychologist | Founder, Six Stages Framework
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